Emmanuel Macron announced on Sunday that he wanted to develop daily RER-type rail transport in 10 French cities in order to promote ecological transition. “The RER is not just in Paris,” he pleaded on Sunday. A good thing for the secretary general of the French Communist Party (PCF) Fabien Roussel who believes that the head of state has “turned his jacket”. “When I hear Mr. Macron, he who created Macron cars in 2018, tell us that we need fewer cars and more RER, he has changed, he has turned his back but so much the better, he puts it in the common sense”, he quipped at the microphone of Europe 1 on Tuesday.
Relieve road traffic and fight against global warming
The idea is to allow “large French metropolises today congested”, “people who have commuter journeys” to do them without a car “by decarbonizing their journeys thanks to these metropolitan RERs”, specified the presidential entourage on Sunday . A claim made by Fabien Roussel during the presidential campaign, he assures stressing that “the train, the RER, the TER, is the best way to offer an alternative to the car”.
“In the morning, we are transported like cattle, packed like sardines”, he exclaimed, calling on the executive to invest “a lot to reduce the cost of transport” and to develop public transport “to fight against the global warming.
Which cities are involved and what funding?
Based on the model of Ile-de-France, this RER network could be developed in Bordeaux, in Lille, believes Fabien Roussel while recalling that the vagueness around the financing of such infrastructures remains and worries. “It is not up to local authorities and businesses to bear all of these costs, the State must make an effort”, he declared at the microphone of Europe 1. Because, theoretically, the RERs depend regional councils, but the executive wanted to be reassuring, indicating that the timetables and funding will be defined at the beginning of the year.
For the secretary general of the PCF, the State must put “the means to help communities, our cities, our transport organizations to lower the costs of public transport, to make them free and to invest in the development of railways”. For its part, Matignon specifies that around fifteen projects are being deployed, particularly in the Lille, Bordeaux, Lyon, Grenoble and Aix-Marseille regions.
Source: Europe1
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